


on the subject of

by KestralWatcher



Series: saving space [8]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol, Background immortal husbands, Confused Nile Freeman, Gen, Slice of Life, Team as Family, Texting, the author mocks religion but very gently, the vaguest of allusions to Andy's eventual mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:08:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26731891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestralWatcher/pseuds/KestralWatcher
Summary: Nile has questions. She turns to her team (family) for answers.
Series: saving space [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870753
Comments: 19
Kudos: 239





	on the subject of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wind_Ryder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/gifts).



> This popped into my head and demanded to be shared. Don’t worry; I’m still working on the second part of my MCU crossover series (because angsty Joe is living rent-free in my brain, and it’s not actually that pleasant). It was supposed to be a silly one-off, but I’m apparently incapable of writing some poignancy into all of my stories for this fandom.
> 
> Canon-compliant for the film, but a bit hand-wavy about the credits scene.
> 
> No beta, we die like immortals.
> 
> Dedicated to and original inspiration from Wind_Ryder. She knows why.

For the easy questions, especially those with binary yes or no answers, Nile goes to Booker. At the very least, she always gets a return text within 24 hours with some type of response. Depending on his time zone or mood (or possibly, sobriety level), he might elaborate a bit.

_Did Nicky and Joe really know Shakespeare?_

[broche] yes

::

_Just figured out my lactose intolerance is now a thing of the past and ate all of the ice cream. Are any of you allergic to anything?_

[broche] no

[broche] but cilantro is a devil herb that tastes like soap

::

_Have any of you actually passed a driving test? In any country? Ever?_

[broche] no

[broche] why would we even take one?

* * *

For the actual practicalities of Nile’s life as an immortal, Joe is generally the safest bet. He is comfortable to chat with during their post-training “debriefs,” or when he puts new braids in her hair, or when he and Nile cook dinner. He helps her put together the true scope of her new existence, such as the long line of identities they can fall into but still require a certain amount of maintenance. The best ways to transport their gear. Where and how the money and safe houses are handled, both of which involve a certain amount of fluidity of ownership.

On that topic, Nile is almost more surprised by how much Joe’s information does not surprise her. “Wait, so the house we stayed at in Sao Paolo last month technically belongs to Booker?” She contemplates her espresso, then feels obligated to ask the follow-up question. “Is he…okay…with us staying there?”

Joe adjusts his sunglasses. Offers her half a shrug. “I imagine he’s as okay with it as I am with the fact that he just withdrew the equivalent of a couple grand from an account in my name from a bank in Dubai.”

Nile waits for Joe to continue speaking, to make some a comment about how Booker shouldn’t have done that, maybe how he’d better pay it back or replace the money in another account. Any indication that this intrusion of Booker into their lives was not wanted. Instead, he reclines in his café chair and curls a hand around his drink.

When he doesn’t add anything, Nile bites the bullet. (And isn’t that a creepy metaphor to use these days?) “And _you’re_ okay with that?”

Joe huffs a short laugh. Whether at her question or the way her voice comes out a bit strangled is unclear. “I may not want to lay eyes on the asshole for a couple more decades, but he’s still _ours_.”

::

_Summer in Dubai? Really? Aren’t you hot?_

[broche] yes

* * *

Andy has been around for a while. And that’s the understatement of Nile’s own potentially very long life. It would be easy to view the woman as some sort of distant commanding officer, or the family matron who prefers for children to be seen and not heard, except that by now, Nile has sung drunken karaoke with her on a night that ended with all four of them skinny-dipping in the Pacific. Andy might never be a bosom buddy, but she is definitely the older sister Nile never had.

Nile turns to Andy for the big picture things, even when the discussions are difficult. The transition from monarchism to democracy to globalism that now seems to be sliding into nationalism. The destruction that colonialism has wrought on multiple continents and so many different indigenous cultures. How Nile’s small role in the conflict in Afghanistan results from centuries of upheaval and power struggles. Andy never condescends during these conversations, never implies that she has all the answers.

Andy asks Nile’s opinions as often as she offers her own, leading Nile to download multiple history texts onto her Kindle. She doubles down on her language lessons to read articles and commentaries by other people of color rather than limit herself to the stereotypical yet predominant Old White Guys who litter English language sources with their biases.

Best of all, when Andy tells Nile about the roles she and the rest of the team have played throughout history, Andy never insists that they were right. Hindsight is twenty-twenty (especially in this train wreck of a decade), and Nicky’s position as an invader during the First Crusade is far from the only time the immortals have realized they could have done better after the fact. Positions that seemed right at the time sometimes led to atrocity later, and a handful of people, no matter their gifts, can not always clean up the messes of entire governments, entire societies, even when their hearts ache to do so.

(One day, years later, Nile realizes the breadth and weight of the gift Andy has bestowed upon her with these discussions. It’s a doctoral-level seminar on history. It’s information Nile could never glean from books, especially when Andy describes events that pre-date the concept of the written word to illustrate a point about contemporary events.)

(One day, decades later, Nile realizes that it’s officer training in one of its oldest forms. That from the beginning, Andy groomed Nile to step into the team’s leadership position after her passing. But Andy never sought to create a duplicate. She pushed Nile to do better, be stronger. In the end, Andy passes on more than her labrys to her chosen heir.)

* * *

Joe will debate anything with a passion born of centuries of holding that precise position.

It takes Nile approximately zero-point-four seconds to recognize that Joe is full of shit.

She loves it anyway, and they spend raucous hours in conversation about anything and everything. Neither are unkind enough to take an actual objectionable stance just for the sake of playing “devil’s advocate.” That doesn’t mean Joe won’t gleefully ruffle Nile’s feathers with a particularly outdated perspective, or that Nile won’t utterly shock Joe for the barest second with millennial nihilism.

(Their favorite travel game is shuffling a deck of handmade cards and drawing a pointless topic to debate. Nicky keeps score. At some point, they might even figure out Nicky’s scoring system enough for one of them to win.)

Perhaps it is cliché that Nile finds herself able to have quieter discussions with Nicky. About philosophy and faith and destiny and their purpose in this world. A thousand years of human meddling separate Nicky’s Christianity from Nile’s Christianity, but they easily find a common base in their desire for goodness. A shared link in their belief that good is a thing you do, not a thing you are.

He never hesitates to point Nile toward philosophers of different faiths if he feels their stances might speak to Nile. She’s a queer millennial of color and considers herself pretty “woke.” A nine hundred plus-year-old white boy regularly challenges her worldview, and she loves him all the more for it.

::

_Hey, you’re probably Catholic, right?_

[broche] i converted to Judaism a few decades ago

_Huh. Not what I expected. Cool, though._

[broche] Buddhism too

_oooookay how does that work?_

[broche] i gave away all my worldly possessions but kept the receipts

_…_

_i hate you so much right now_

[broche] ask andy to tell you the story about nicky and the preacher with the snakes

* * *

But even after all of that, Nile still has questions. Questions that burn at the back of her mind, flaring up in the oddest moments. Questions for which Nile will get answers, one way or another.

They usually hit a nearby bar after a successful, violence-free mission. Unfortunately, they’re in Oklahoma City, and none of them have any desire to court potential racism and homophobia when they’re in an otherwise celebratory mood. Instead, Nile mixes a giant batch of margaritas and joins Nicky and Joe in the combination living room/bedroom of the studio apartment Copley had secured for this trip. (Andy had opted to do early “recon” for the follow-up mission in San Juan and then made no secret of packing at least half a dozen bathing suits.)

Two drinks in, Joe and Nicky have gravitated toward each other on the king-size bed. Nicky toys with the curls at the nape of Joe’s neck. Nile lounges at the foot of the bed, legs entangled with theirs. Eventually, she’ll migrate to the sleeper sofa, if she doesn’t just pass out here again, where there is plenty of room once the guys snuggle close.

“Okay, what about giant water monsters?” Nile asks, pouring another drink. “Nessie, and such?”

“Nope,” Joe says. “In Loch Ness, at least.”

Nicky adds, “And other inland bodies of water that we know of. They still might exist in the ocean.”

“Humanity knows more about space than they do about the depths of the oceans of this very planet.” Joe is obviously attempting to appear wise, but the drinks mean he comes off sassy.

Nicky tugs on Joe’s hair. “ _Habibi_ , I think you are mansplaining again.” (Nile taught Nicky that term last month, and he has delighted in using it against both Joe and Andy regularly ever since.)

Nile waves away that particular argument before it can start. “Sasquatch, then.” When both men furl their eyebrows in confusion at the term, Nile says, “Bigfoot. Yeti. Furry human throwbacks, supposedly hidden in the woods.”

Joe opens his mouth. Closes it again. “I will make another pitcher.” He withdraws from the bed and escapes to the kitchen without looking at either of them.

Nicky eyes Joe’s retreating form with concern then appears to have a revelation that sparks a bout of giggles. In a stage whisper, he tells Nile, “Booker is very hairy.”

“I did _not_ need to know that, thank you!” But Nile joins in the giggling, internally delighted that a tipsy Nicky appears capable of talking about their absent brother without pain shadowing his features.

When Joe returns, he tops up their drinks and sprawls back among the pillows as if that had been his plan all along. “I’m surprised you did not start this line of interrogation with dragons.”

“That’s silly,” Nile says. “Everyone knows dragon stories came from people finding dinosaur bones.” Then, she gasps, as the bones she imagines transform into horns in her mind’s eye. “But _unicorns_. Please tell me there used to be unicorns, even if humans are assholes who killed them all off.”

“Humans are assholes,” Joe starts—then he raises his hand as if to fend off Nile’s growing excitement. “Clever assholes who split pairs of horns so they could double the price for unsuspecting buyers. And told silly stories to raise the price even further.”

Nicky cocks his head. “The oryx, right?”

“Yes, and sometimes the chiru,” Joe says. “Among others.”

Nile makes a mental note to look up those animals later, acknowledges that she will never remember in her current inebriated state, and moves onto another mythological animal. “Griffons.”

“Nile,” Joe says, shaking his head. “Even you know better than to think an animal from a children’s movie—”

“Not _hippogriffs_ ,” Nile says. “Griffons. Half lion, half eagle? Or at least half large cat, half bird of prey?”

“Ohhh,” Nicky says. Pauses. Glances at Joe, who hides his face in his cup. “Yes.”

Nile could not have heard that right. “Wait, what?” she asks. “Griffons are real?” She sits up straight on the bed.

“Yes, very much so,” Joe says. “There is a preserve we visited in the 1700s. There were pegasuses there too, I think. Remember, _ya amar_?”

Nicky hums, low in his throat. He says, “I believe the correct plural is ‘pegasi.’” And then Nicky can’t contain himself further, falling across Joe’s lap with a howl of laughter.

Joe snatches Nicky’s cup at the last moment and drains the last sip, tossing a wink in Nile’s direction.

Her brain takes a second to catch up, and she blames Joe’s heavy hand with the tequila. “Oh my god,” she says. “I hate you both _so much_.” Nile has enough just presence of mind to check that each glass is now empty and that the pitcher is out of reach on the nightstand.

She should know by now, however, that she is vastly outclassed in any match against these two men, even when the arena is a pillow fight.

::

_Have you ever seen a ghost?_

(Booker never actually responds to that text.)

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Cilantro is disgusting and tastes like soap. No further questions.
> 
> 2\. Why is Booker in Dubai? Your guess is as good as mine.
> 
> 3\. I mean absolutely no offense to any religion in this bit of fluff. I saw the opportunity to use one of my favorite jokes and couldn’t resist.
> 
> 4\. Nile made them watch all the Harry Potter movies, then went on a rant about transphobia, but even before that they were all very supportive of her loving a book series but absolutely hating the author. (One day, Joe will tell her about how much of a dick Oscar Wilde was to his Nicolo.)
> 
> 5\. Thanks for joining me in this silliness before I get back to the MCU crossover!


End file.
